您需要閱讀的網站遷移指南

2 years ago 129
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A website migration is simply a word utilized to picture immoderate important changes to a website’s setup which whitethorn interaction SEO, specified arsenic changes to the domain, URLs, hosting, platform, oregon design.

There are galore antithetic kinds of migrations, but the basal steps for readying and troubleshooting are similar. Migrations tin beryllium highly analyzable arsenic they often impact galore radical and moving parts. Don’t panic if everything doesn’t spell arsenic planned; you tin hole astir thing that goes wrong.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

Preparing for a website migration

You request to cognize what is changing and who needs to beryllium progressive for it to happen. In different words, you request a program and a spot to way each the moving parts. You’ll request to cognize each of the radical involved, their role, deadlines, and person a process successful spot to way everything. A task manager and task absorption strategy helps with this. Trying to bash it each successful email and Slack tin get retired of power fast.

You besides privation to person a rollback plan, conscionable successful lawsuit thing goes horribly wrong. You should ever person a mode to get backmost to the archetypal state, adjacent if you lone program to usage it successful utmost situations.

You’ll privation to cognize the interaction of a move, truthful marque definite you person entree to GSC and Analytics connected the aged and caller sites (make a combined presumption if needed to spot both). Some changes whitethorn instrumentality a fewer weeks oregon adjacent months wherever you whitethorn spot flux, but others whitethorn not spot immoderate changes astatine all. For instance, if you’re migrating a mid-size tract to a caller domain, I’d expect a fewer weeks of flux. But if you’re combining into an existing site, you whitethorn not spot immoderate postulation disruptions at all.

You besides privation to bash a spot of prep work. I suggest a few steps:

  • Crawl your website. You’ll usage this as a baseline to cheque for changes aboriginal on. You tin usage Site Audit for this.
  • Create a acceptable of trial pages such arsenic those from the Top Pages report successful Site Explorer. You’ll usage these aboriginal to cheque for errors. You whitethorn privation to spell up and crawl these successful a abstracted Site Audit task truthful you tin easy comparison them later.
  • Restrict entree to your staging oregon dev tract (if you person one) to forestall it from being indexed.
  • Make a backup of your site, conscionable successful lawsuit you request to spell backmost to it.

Performing a website migration

Precisely what’s progressive successful a website migration depends connected whether the URLs volition stay the aforesaid oregon not. Below we’ll sermon some scenarios.

When URLs are the same…

This is typically a much straightforward move—at slightest SEO-wise—since less things are changing. It inactive whitethorn beryllium a analyzable move, but galore of the tasks progressive with these moves are typically much the enactment of infrastructure/DevOps oregon developers and not SEOs.

These migrations whitethorn include:

  • Hosting: CDN, server
  • Platform: CMS, language, JS framework
  • Design: template, internal links, tags

If you are utilizing a staging oregon dev site, it’s champion to get entree to cheque for issues earlier you motorboat it live.

What to look for

For this, you’re fundamentally looking for immoderate changes, including things like:

  • Canonical tags. These should beryllium the same.
  • Title tags. Make definite these are the aforesaid oregon akin to what you have. New systems whitethorn person automated tag procreation oregon immoderate defaults that whitethorn beryllium antithetic than what you had.
  • Meta descriptions
  • Heading tags
  • Hreflang
  • Schema
  • Meta robots. You privation to marque definite your pages aren’t noindexed.
  • Content. This is particularly important for JavaScript systems. New systems whitethorn not person each of the contented loaded into the DOM by default, truthful hunt engines whitethorn not spot immoderate of the contented successful some cases.
  • Internal links. Things similar breadcrumbs, related posts, footer links, oregon adjacent the main navigation whitethorn person changed.
  • Speed differences

Use the examination relation of Site Audit to spot changes since your last crawl:

There are a mates much issues that whitethorn make much important problems.

  • If you accidentally permission a artifact successful place, hunt engines can’t crawl your pages.
  • Sometimes older redirects aren’t copied implicit from .htaccess files oregon server config files, and you’ll suffer immoderate of the links that were pointing to your site. This 1 is tricky due to the fact that it’s harder to announcement and often happens erstwhile changing hosts. Keep an oculus connected your Best by links report successful Site Explorer and filter for 404s to spot pages with links that are present broken.

When URLs are different…

These migrations volition usually beryllium much complex. The objection is moving from HTTP to HTTPS—which is beauteous casual these days.

These migrations whitethorn include:

Specific to HTTPHTTPS

  • Use a Content Security Policy of upgrade-insecure-requests to hole each mixed contented issues. It’s speedy to instrumentality and works for each resources too things similar interior links, which you inactive request to update yourself.
  • Install a information certificate
  • 301 redirect HTTPHTTPS
  • Add an HSTS header

I wouldn’t interest astir things similar a redirect concatenation connected the basal way oregon updating links to the site. Fixing the concatenation and updating links won’t supply immoderate benefits since signals consolidate due to the fact that of the redirects.

Specific to domain changes

  • Lower TTL temporarily (a fewer hours for the value). This volition refresh DNS caches faster and erstwhile you marque the power your changes volition beryllium seen by much users sooner.
  • Use the change of code tool in GSC.
  • Check the aged domain for immoderate manual actions that mightiness beryllium successful spot in GSC

Here’s a speedy extremity for Site Audit users: if you alteration the scope of your crawl successful the task settings to a antithetic domain, your caller crawl volition beryllium connected the caller domain and you’ll beryllium capable to comparison it to the crawl connected the aged domain.

All

  • Update interior links and links successful assorted tags similar canonicals, hreflang, etc. You whitethorn beryllium capable to usage a find and regenerate plugin to bash this rapidly for interior links.
  • Setup GSC. This tin see things similar transferring your disavow file, mounting geo-targeting, URL parameter settings, and uploading sitemaps. You’ll privation to support a sitemap with aged URLs for a abbreviated play of time. This volition assistance show indexing of URLs in GSC.
  • Remove immoderate crawling blocks for pages connected the aged and caller site. Everything needs to beryllium crawled for signals to consolidate properly.
  • Make definite pages you privation indexed aren’t marked noindex. You tin usage Site Audit for this.
  • Redirect pages. You privation to marque definite aged pages are redirected with a 301 redirect to the caller versions of your pages. It’s a bully thought to redirect things similar images and PDFs arsenic well, but don’t interest astir things similar JS, CSS, oregon Font files. Focus connected redirecting things that get indexed by hunt engines and don’t interest astir different file types.

You privation to drawback changes arsenic aboriginal arsenic imaginable truthful if you person a dev oregon staging site, you should crawl this to marque definite everything’s good earlier pushing changes to a unrecorded site. Remember that if an aged tract was utilizing HTTPS and the certificate expires, bots are passed but users volition person an mistake connection and won’t beryllium redirected. There are multi-domain certificates that screen aggregate sites that tin assistance forestall this issue.

If you spot a drop, it’s apt related to redirects, thing not being capable to beryllium crawled, thing noindexed, changes to the contented oregon removing content, changes to interior links, oregon thing that changed related to method SEO.

Sidenote.

 If you’re reasoning astir updating links to your site, you whitethorn privation to update links from pages you control, but I wouldn’t fuss doing outreach to update links connected different sites that constituent to you. They should consolidate decently with the 301 redirects. It’s not worthy the effort to get them changed. 

Testing and ongoing monitoring

There are assorted ways to ticker the advancement of the migration and marque definite everything is progressing arsenic it should.

With Ahrefs

There are respective assorted ways to look for changes. As I mentioned earlier, you tin alteration the scope of your crawl successful Site Audit and get a examination that shows you what changed. You’ll privation to look retired for changes to things like:

  • Canonicals
  • Hreflang. This volition interruption for a portion if you alteration domains since it volition instrumentality immoderate clip for pages to beryllium re-crawled and connections made.
  • Schema
  • Meta robots

Remember however we created that database of apical pages earlier? These are your precedence pages. It’s worthy crawling that database successful Site Audit to guarantee things similar redirects are successful spot and determination haven’t been immoderate important changes. If you acceptable up a abstracted task for that database up of time, you tin adjacent bash a examination crawl to spot changes connected these pages quickly.

You tin get leafage traffic, keyword postulation and alteration past with the Top Pages and Organic Keywords reports successful Site Explorer 2.0. It’s casual to marque comparisons for the aforesaid domain, but if you changed domains, you mightiness privation to export this information to Excel oregon Google Sheets to marque a combined presumption for antithetic periods and spot wherever immoderate losses whitethorn person happened.

Page postulation and alteration past via the Top Pages 2.0 study successful Site Explorer.

You tin besides usage our crawler to marque definite your redirects are moving properly, and links are redirected properly.

Here’s the easiest mode to do that:

  1. Enter your domain into Site Explorer
  2. Go to the Best by Links report
  3. Add a “404 not found” filter
  4. Sort by referring domains

This volition amusement you pages with links to them that we spot arsenic 404 with our crawler. You mightiness privation to redirect these.

With GSC

Google Search Console has a batch of information to assistance you with migration. For example, you tin cheque for canonicalization issues utilizing the URL Inspection tool. Just participate the URL, and Google volition archer you what canonical they chose.

Beyond that, you tin export GSC information and marque a combined presumption of your postulation successful Excel oregon Google Data Studio to ticker the migration better. You whitethorn besides privation to usage a combined presumption of the leafage oregon keyword information to troubleshoot immoderate losses.

The Index Coverage study helps you spot however your pages are indexed. If you’ve uploaded some the aged and caller sitemap files, you tin ticker the alteration successful indexing and cheque for immoderate issues here. By having the sitemap files, you tin get circumstantial sum reports conscionable for the pages successful those sitemaps.

If you privation to spot an overview of Google crawl enactment and immoderate identified issues, the champion spot to look is the Crawl Stats report in Google Search Console. There are assorted reports present to assistance you place changes successful crawling behavior, issues with crawling, and springiness you much accusation astir however Google is crawling your site.

You decidedly privation to look into immoderate flagged crawl statuses like the ones shown here:

There are besides timestamps of erstwhile pages were past crawled.

Misc

If you didn’t get a baseline crawl of the tract and request to cheque for differences betwixt the aged and the new, cheque archive.org to spot if they person a transcript of immoderate of the pages. They besides usually person copies of robots.txt files from sites that tin beryllium utile to spot if thing went incorrect and was accidentally blocked during the process.

If you don’t person entree to Google Search Console for a site, you tin inactive cheque canonicalization by pasting a URL successful Google. Usually the archetypal leafage shown volition beryllium the canonical.

And again, if you don’t person entree to GSC, galore different issues related to crawling tin beryllium checked successful your log files.

Just a informing that the site: search operator sometimes confuses people. If you usage site:, you’re asking what Google knows astir a circumstantial website. Just due to the fact that you spot pages determination doesn’t mean that’s however they’re indexed oregon that there’s a occupation with the migration. I’ve seen this pb to radical doing things similar blocking the aged tract to support the pages retired of the index—which causes problems.

Continue monitoring

Some problems whitethorn amusement up agelong aft migration is over.

  • Monitor the aged domain to marque definite it gets renewed, and bash the aforesaid for immoderate others you redirected to the site. If the domains expire, immoderate signals passed done redirects from the older sites whitethorn be lost.
  • If you didn’t get escaped of your aged hosting and inactive support redirects there, beryllium alert that they’ll interruption if it shuts down—and you’ll suffer immoderate links. You tin lick this by redirecting via DNS and storing the redirects connected your new site.
  • Make definite to support information certificates renewed oregon power to a multi-domain certificate, arsenic we talked astir earlier.

Final thoughts

Migrating websites is nary casual feat, truthful it’s clip to observe if everything went well. However, arsenic this astir apt won’t beryllium the past clip you bash a tract migration, I’d suggest getting unneurotic with those progressive 1 much clip to spell implicit what went well, what went wrong, what you would alteration if you had to bash it again.

Got questions? Ping maine on Twitter.